Summary: |
"There is growing interest in the adoption of Concurrent Engineering (CE) in the Construction Industry. CE has the potential to make construction projects less fragmented, improve project quality, reduce project duration and reduce total project cost. Also, the urgent need to improve the performance of construction can be achieved during the design process by concurrently considering key aspects of the construction project’s downstream phases. It is evident that by adopting CE, the software and manufacturing industries have significantly improved their business processes.While Concurrent engineering (CE) is gaining acceptance, some implementation efforts have not realised their full potential for reducing costs, reducing time, and increasing efficiency, effectiveness and performance for product development efforts. This is due in part to weak planning to support the implementation. One method that has been used successfully to improve CE implementation planning is to conduct an organisation readiness assessment prior to the introduction of CE. This helps to investigate the extent to which the organisation is ready to adopt Concurrent Engineering. Therefore, in order to facilitate the adoption of the CE concept in construction, it is necessary to assess the extent to which firms in the construction industry are ready for the adoption of CE. This can be done by carrying out Readiness Assessment for any construction organisation before the adoption of CE. Readiness assessment tools and models have been developed and used in other industries such as the manufacturing and software engineering industries. This paper discusses Concurrent Engineering and its application to construction. It includes a comparative review of existing readiness assessment tools and models that have been successfully used in the manufacturing and IT sectors. It argues that readiness assessment of the construction supply chain is a necessity for the implementation of CE in construction and assesses the applicability of existing tools and models to the construction industry. A new readiness assessment model for the construction industry called “CERAMConstruct” is presented, with details of the development of the model and its associated questionnaire, assessment methodology, and case studies. The paper concludes that the CERAMConstruct model offers useful benefits in the implementation of CE in construction. Aspects of further work to be done are also outlined." |